


House Rules

by persnickett



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-26
Updated: 2011-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all fun and games until someone can't live by the rules.</p><p>...<br/>Manhandling, abuse of furniture, un-funny bald jokes. With apologies for Matt’s handwriting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House Rules

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest and for Severina, who wrote the prompt 'it's all fun and games until someone...' and also wanted rules on the fridge. And because she gave Matt a Cheeto-Gran Turismo codependency.

John turned his head away, tamped down his gag reflex and pulled. The strangled, sucking gurgle was almost worse than the feel of wet, blood-warm hair wrapped around his fingers. But the whole damn thing was pretty fucking unpleasant.  
   
“I gotcha now,” he gritted, more to reassure himself than anything. “It’s over for you, asshole. Let go.” No man liked to commit an act like this one but somebody had to. And John hadn’t had to in a hell of a long time.  
   
...Because either Holly had always made sure the drain was clean, or she had somehow been able to keep her damn hair out of it.  
   
John gave one last tug and the slimy, dripping mass of long, black hair festooned with soap scum and lime scale pulled reluctantly free.  
   
“You are one butt-ugly son of a bitch,” John told the clog dangling from his fingers honestly.  
   
The shit he put up with from this kid. This was officially strike number one.  
   
The bottles of fancy soap and shampoo and goddamn _conditioner_ crowding up his shower had been one thing, but this was some seriously repugnant shit. There wasn’t even room for his razor in here any more, he had to do it in the sink now.  
   
Hell, two strikes. You wouldn’t think somebody who was such a scrawny little runt could take up so much damn space.  
   
John climbed out of the shower, dripping all over the floor, to wrap the disgusting wad in toilet paper before he dumped it in the garbage can next to the toilet. There was no way he was flushing it. A backed up crapper was the last thing he needed right now. This thing was bad enough, he thought, wiping the greenish-black drain sludge off his fingers.  
   
Then, just as he was making sure he had the whole heinous mess wrapped up completely, he could swear he saw a motherfucking toe nail clipping.   
    
Jesus. What the hell was that kid _doing_ in his shower?  
   
Strike three. Playtime was over. It looked like John was going to have to lay down some [rules](http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/6833/rulesl.jpg) around here.  
   
**

At first, Matt took John’s little note on the fridge like he did everything else, alternating bitching and eye-rolling with a lot of smarmy, sarcastic lip, and razzing John for getting old and set in his ways. But he cleaned up his act a little – moved some of his shit out of the bathroom, and John never had another problem with the plumbing again.  
   
But damned if it isn’t always the little things.  
   
The tipping point was John’s chair. Or really, when the kid suggested John get _rid_ of his chair.  
   
Offside. Way out of line.  
   
John’s chair was where he watched the game. Hell, it was where he spent most of his time when he was actually home. And alright, the thing might have looked a bit ratty to uneducated eyes – with electrical tape covering the tears in the buttery-soft, worn-in leather and a darkish spot where Jack threw up Chef Boyardee on John’s lap that time he caught the flu.  
   
But it still reclined, and if he flipped the headrest up, there was a bunch of Lucy’s little pink stickers under there, and John was reasonably certain Jack was actually conceived in that chair, and there was _no fucking way_ the kid was gonna talk him into getting rid of it.  
   
Even if it did smell like a road house.  
   
John was actually pretty surprised by the whole damn discussion in the first place. Matt always seemed to like that chair. God knows he spent enough time in it, stuffing Cheetos in his face one-handed while playing that stupid car video game with the ridiculous little steering wheel. In fact, the problem might have actually been that Matt had gotten a little _too_ comfortable.   
   
See, the kid was _constantly_ consuming that Red Bull shit. He always had a can on the go. Always. If John didn’t see one in his hand, there was at least one open somewhere; on his desk or the countertop or the coffee table. Sometimes all of the above.  
   
And the can John found on  the [night in question](http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6939/rules2f.jpg) looked like it had been spilled at some point and never got wiped up – because it was _stuck_ to the armrest of John’s favorite chair so bad, he had to rip it off like a band-aid.    
    
**  
   
John wasn’t concerned with the argument so much, as with what happened after it. In fact he could barely even remember it.  
   
He remembered how it started, with the soda can and the chair and, as fights tend to go, he forgot where it went – the forking, hairpinning roads it took to get to where it ended up.  
   
Mostly, he remembered Matt.  
   
Matt like John had never seen him. Little spots of pink colouring his cheeks. Hands and hair zooming around everywhere like angry birds, while he shifted gears seamlessly from defensive, dismissive jokes, to snide, attacking quips, to reciting what felt like a meticulous catalogue of every transgression, insensitivity, and fuck-up John had committed since the first day the kid moved in.  
   
He remembered Matt way too close to him; going as far as to stretch up on tippy-toes – the better to get up in John’s face – even poking him in the chest at one point. He remembered the word ‘bully’.  
   
And he remembered how he went and lived right up to it, by putting his hands on the kid. Grabbing him tight by the upper arms and pulling him roughly right up against his chest, so the hand Matt had been using to jab an accusing finger repeatedly into the space just in front of John’s nose was pinned between them, trapped and effectively immobilized.  
   
He remembered how Matt finally went quiet, not out of capitulation but out of sheer, incredulous, outrage.  
   
Matt’s posture didn’t falter, not for a second. He didn’t deflate and give in, going soft and pliant in John’s hostile grip; didn’t budge an inch on the aggressive tension John could feel strung through his frame, bowstring tight.  
   
He didn’t stiffen, in preparation for some kind of violence from John – for him to squeeze crushingly, or maybe for a slap. He just tilted his chin up slightly and stared John down. Brows moving up a fraction and the barest hint of a smile playing on his lips, maybe. Daring him.  
   
John realized what he was doing and shoved Matt away from himself.  
   
He turned his back and hunched over the counter, both hands white-knuckle gripping the rounded edge and staring into the sink as waves of guilt, anger, and shame crashed over him like the tide coming in.  
   
He had broken his own, unspoken, rule. Hands off the kid.  
   
It wasn’t that John was afraid he could ever really hurt Matt, exactly. It was more of a self preservation strategy than anything.  
   
It was simple enough, really.  
   
John had done a lot of shit in his lifetime that he never could have accomplished if he wasn’t pretty good at ignoring things his body was telling him, like _pain_ , and _stop_.  
   
_This is a bad idea. I’m too old for this shit._  
   
So he figured he could pretty much ignore it when his body started telling him it was... _interested_ in Matt Farrell.  
    
It wasn’t all the time, but it had been happening for a few months now, and John thought he was doing a damn good job of it so far. Even if he broke his rule a little more often than he liked, shouldering the kid away from the mirror in the mornings while they jockeyed for the sink, toothbrushes in hand. Or mussing up his hair even more than the natural state of things, whenever Matt insisted on wandering the house half dressed with that rumpled, sleepy-eyed, out-of-bed look he had – sometimes until well past noon.  
   
But this was the first time since the very intense, very definitely _unusual_ , circumstances last summer that he’d ever put hands to the kid in a manner that was anything other than casual. And they both registered the distinction. John’s few seconds of handling had been – not meant in violence, but still, without the poor excuse of protection, either. It had been an effort to control. To subdue. Like a cop.  
   
He remembered how Matt’s blazing, silent stare had hit him worse than a fist to the face. He remembered the last words Matt shouted after him as he retreated down the hall, trying not to stomp every step of the way like a chastised teenager.  
   
“You know what, no worries McClane, I’m gone. I’ll be outta your hair by morning!”  
   
He remembered the reverberating thump that was Matt taking a swing at the doorframe on his way into the den-turned-office that was also currently Matt’s bedroom. John had been through his share of domestic disagreements. If Matt had’ve had a door on that bedroom, John knew, he would be slamming it.  
   
But the sharpest memory of all, was that neither of them made the obvious joke about the ‘out of your hair’ thing.  
   
**  
   
“Just _call_ him.” Lucy’s phone voice sounded tired.  
   
It had been pretty late to phone, John supposed, especially when the only reason he could give her was ‘just to say goodnight’. And then she’d probably gotten fed up with listening to what followed – which was, John realized, what was now probably getting close to a good fifteen seconds of silence.  
   
“Who?” he asked, at first. And then, because he was pretty sure that was pushing it even if she couldn’t see him running his fingers obsessively over the Red Bull ring left on the arm of his chair, “The kid? Nah.”  
   
 “It’s late. He’ll be asleep,” John went on. “You should get to bed too, honey.”  
   
“Farrell doesn’t sleep,” Lucy said flatly. She had him there. “Come on, Dad. It’s Matt. What’s he realistically going to do, bite your head off? It’s an opportunity to open his motor-mouth, he’s more likely to talk your ear off. You don’t even have to talk about the fight.”  
   
“Who said there was a fight?”  
   
“Dad. We’re McClanes. When isn’t there a fight?”  
   
She had a point, dammit.  
   
Out loud, he said, “Good night, sweetheart.”  
   
“Alright, alright. I can take a hint. Consider the subject closed. But Daddy?” Lucy didn’t wait for him to answer before she went on. “Just promise me you’ll think about whether you’re really worried Matt’s sleeping, or if you’re actually just being a stubborn asshole like usual.”  
   
Then she speed talked her _goodnights_ and _love-yous_ and hung up before John could bark “Lucy McClane!” into the phone.  
   
And John shouldn’t be smiling. He was alone, in a house way too big for a single man, getting well into his fifties, with longdistance-smartassed kids who showed about as little respect for his authority as John did for Scalvino’s.  
   
But the thing was. He was running his fingers over that round scar in the leather again, and thinking about stupid shit like…what was that word, metaphors. How, kinda like Lucy’s stickers and Jack’s Beefaroni stain, Matt had left his mark here too.  
   
It was almost June. In a little over a month – if he had’ve still been here that is – Matt would have been staying with John a year. It had gone by quick. John thought back to the day the kid moved in and realized they never talked about how long Matt would be staying.  For Matt, the whole arrangement had probably always been temporary. John supposed at first he’d always thought it would be too. He’d just gotten…used to having him around.  
   
John ran his fingers over the round, raised bump in the leather one last time before he hauled himself out of it to get ready to hit the hay.  
   
It didn’t matter how weird, or how awkward it was now, sometimes the truth was like that. And the truth was, that sometime when John wasn’t paying attention, Matt Farrell had really become a part of his home, of his life.  
   
Just like the stupid chair.  
   
John wondered if Lucy was right, and the kid might still really be awake.  
   
**

It was like he said, John was less concerned with their fight than with what had happened after it.  
   
Matt had a duffel bag, a knapsack, and at least four different computer bags – and they were all out on his bed. There were also several Hefty bags from under the kitchen sink that appeared to be filled with his clothes.  
   
He didn’t turn around when John announced his presence with a rap of knuckles against the door frame, so John made his way into the room and looked into the open bags. It looked like, while Matt’s clothes didn’t rank the duffel, his dolls got the Cadillac treatment. John picked one up off the top of the chaotic heap of stiff, plastic bodies and entangled poseable limbs, piled high like some kind of sci-fi battlefield pyre.  
   
He studied it for a minute before carrying it over to the shelf – it was his best guess as to where Matt had usually kept this thing – and then stood back to contemplate it, like it was a piece of goddamn modern art or something, while he figured out what to say.  
   
Count on Matt to save him the trouble.  
   
“I didn’t know you had such an attachment to the Silver Surfer,” he said, without looking up from where he was winding a long power cord around and around his hand. “He can stay with you if it’s what you both want but I think _he_ should have the final say. And we’ll have to work out some kind of visitation schedule. I like the sound of Wednesdays and weekends, but I’m flexible.”  
   
Well, the kid was talking to him. And the decibel level wasn’t breaking the noise by-law, so, this was an improvement.  
   
John walked back over to the bed to remove a couple more of the creepy-looking toys.  
   
“Alright, McClane, okay, I give,” Matt said, tossing the cord on the bed so he could put his hands on his hips, flail them around a little and put them back. “ _What_ are you doing?”  
   
“Helping.”  
   
“This is helping? Okay. So I’m not sure if you completely get the concept of packing, but you’re actually just sort of undoing everything I just—”  
   
“You’re not packing,” John interjected. “You’re unpacking.”  
   
“There’s that control issue we talked about.”  
   
For all Matt’s cracking wise, he hadn’t yet cracked a single smile.  
   
Even if July hadn’t been enough of a clue, John knew him well enough by now to know this was Matt’s favored defence mechanism. And it was a bad sign. The kid could throw up a wall pretty thick, and mighty quick.  
   
“Can’t get outta my hair if I ain’t got any, kid.”  
   
“Caught that one huh? Well. Hard to miss. I guess I _was_ technically yelling it.” John couldn’t be sure, but he thought Matt sounded just the tiniest bit apologetic.  
   
“You’re not leaving ‘cause of one stupid argument,” John replied, trying to keep his tone cajoling and not just outright domineering.  “I’ve had enough people walk out on me because of some stupid fight – hell, I’ve done the walking, kid. Take it from a guy who knows, you’re just gonna be leaving for the wrong reasons.”  
    
“Newsflash Cronkite,” Matt said. His mild tone belied the bite in his words. “I’m leaving because _I want_ to. Hell, _you_ want me to. What other reason is there?”  
   
“ _Is_ it what you want? If it is you gotta say so, because if it ain’t what you want you’re not going anywhere.” John could be a pushy son of a bitch sometimes, he knew it.  
   
And he was good with it.  
   
Matt put down the keyboard he was trying to wrap in newspaper, and sighed. The kid’s walls were finally showing some cracks, and John could feel the annoyance that seeped through them coming off him in waves.

“I’m not the one who doesn’t know what they want, McClane. You constantly shove me away. You grunt and you fight…you gotta be all tough, and stoic. The big, gruff hero doing everything alone all the time – and then when it works, here you are! Telling people when they can and can’t go.”

John shifted his weight, refusing to do anything that could count as a ‘grunt’ and trying to feel comfortable in his own skin. He had a bad feeling they were headed out of bounds again.  
   
“You know what,” Matt said, like he’d been thinking about it quite a while, “you’re right. This is your place. And it was super awesome of you to let me stay here. But now? All healed up!” Matt slapped at his thigh, and stamped his foot a couple of times to demonstrate. “Solid. Steady. And you’re off the painkillers and you don’t need anyone around to open your pill bottles or help you lock up at night. If you don’t know – if you can’t tell me you still want me here...” Matt paused, and inserted a shrug before saying simply, “I’m gone.”  
   
They looked at each other. The room was too quiet. John realized it was the constant, low hum of all of Matt’s equipment that was missing.  
   
So this was really going to happen. John mustered up a nod.  
   
“Alright. Like I said, if it’s what you want. Is there...somewhere I can drive you? You got somewhere to go?”  
   
And John didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t for Matt to pick that moment to inexplicably blow up at him again.  
   
“That’s what you got out of that!?” Matt said, hands flying into the air again, and voice moving up a few notches. “Everything I just said to you – out of all that you got that _I want_ to be leaving?"  
   
It’s what you said. You put on the big attitude pants and made smart-mouthed jokes about CBS News, and you said you were leaving because you want to.  
   
That’s what John should have said. But what came out was a growling sort of noise that sounded a lot like:  
   
“YOU MAKE ME SO CRAZY. You get under my skin like nobody else, kid. You know that?"  
   
“YOU?” Matt shot back. “You don’t think this is driving me fucking nuts too? Constantly touching me, in my space. I can’t…I can’t go anywhere without getting manhandled.”  
   
Apparently John hadn’t been doing as good a job with the hands-off thing as he thought.  
   
“You’ve got like. No boundaries. You come in the fucking bathroom when I’m in the shower. What is that!?”  
   
“You take forever in there. I gotta shave.”

“Well, I gotta fucking masturbate. When am I gonna do that, huh?” Matt was starting to move around the room now, pacing, and obviously too far gone with indignant ire to care much about what he was saying.

“There’s no door on this room, McClane, you see that?” Matt took a few steps toward the doorway and waved his arms at it before whirling around and approaching John again. “I got you, everywhere, fucking _touching_ all the time. And. I can’t even—”  
   
Matt had marched right up to John and was standing in front of him now. He took another step closer.  
   
“Here. You wanna touch?” Matt moved forward the last few inches. He was much too close again, and John could feel the heat of him.  
   
Their arms tangled loosely, and everywhere skin met skin it lit John’s nerves up like little patches of fire. Matt was doing something, batting away John’s confused, half-hearted attempt at deflecting him and fumbling at his waist.  
   
“Here,” he said roughly, “feel.” And what Matt had been doing became clear. He got a hold on John’s hips and rammed their groins into each other.  
   
Holy Christ.  
   
John took a sharp breath, and his fingers made fists at his sides. He felt frozen, paralyzed. He wanted to push Matt away again but he didn’t trust his hands.  
   
“Feel _this_ ,” Matt was saying, angrily, as he pressed closer. “That’s what you wanna know?” Matt gave a little thrust, poking into him and sliding his hips tauntingly over John’s own. “That. How I feel about you? What I _want_? There it is. Happy?”  
   
And then Matt went still against him.  
   
“Wait… _are you_?” He didn’t pull away.  
   
John shut his eyes, blocking out Matt’s wide, surprised eyes staring searchingly at him, so he could try to think. Maybe he was. But that didn’t mean it was easy.  
   
He felt a muscle in his cheek jump. He was gritting his teeth.  
   
He heard Matt’s voice; a close, low murmur barely above a whisper. “McClane. Just. Don’t storm off again okay? Just…”  
   
John opened his eyes and found he wasn’t prepared for it. Matt was pale, and quiet – almost frightened-looking. Like the prospect of John’s answer could put a fear in him that the blustering and jostling of a few hours before could never accomplish.  
   
“I’m gonna let go,” Matt was saying, slowly, like he was gentling a large, unpredictable farm animal. “Try not to…freak out. Or murder me to death with my own FireWire cables. Okay?”  
   
He backed up a few steps and just kept looking at John with that big-eyed, stricken look.  
   
John pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed a couple of times. He turned and sat down on Matt’s bed, next to the duffel full of toys. This changed everything.  
   
Or maybe it changed nothing at all. John wasn’t sure yet.  
   
“That – what you got goin’ on down there,” John said, waving vaguely at Matt’s pelvic region. “You get that from me yellin’ at ya?”  
   
The whole thing just seemed so nuts. John wasn’t sure they were going to make any sense of it, but maybe it was worth a shot.  
   
Matt cocked his head to the side, like he was considering. Like that wasn’t the craziest thing he’d ever heard come out of John’s mouth.  
   
“Oh, I get ‘that’ pretty much all the time around you,” Matt said quietly, moving gingerly over to the bed to sit down on the edge. He left the duffel between them.  
   
“So, when I grabbed you earlier…”  
   
“Yeah, then too,” Matt admitted. “But I’m not some kind of— it’s not like that, okay. It’s not…the shouting or the pushing it’s…just you. It’s anything, really. When you check the safety on your gun, when you go to call me ‘kid’, and then switch to ‘Matt’ – or y’know, take out the trash. Fix the garbage disposal. God, it could be anything.” Matt tossed up his hands a little and then let them fall in his lap. “Sometimes I just…notice. You.”  
   
John knew exactly what the kid meant – he thought about the way Matt looked at a cup of coffee in the morning like somebody tossed a drowning man a life-preserver, the way he lit up when he had a computer problem to solve.   
   
“Look it’s not that crazy, okay, you wanted to know what I want and…okay so I wasn’t planning to show you like that but, fuck, McClane, am I really alone here? I mean, that – what just happened with you when I…did that. Which, okay, I totally shouldn’t have, so yeah, sorry. But I mean – y’know, fuck me if I’m wrong, but that’s _want_ , McClane.”  
   
Matt had finally got done babbling. John was supposed to say something, he knew. But what?  
   
“Okay, no. I get it.”  
   
Apparently the kid had decided to take John’s silence as his answer. And maybe he wasn’t wrong. 

Didn’t stop John feeling like shit, though

“Matt…”  
   
“No, it’s fine, I do. It’s weird. I understand. Completely. I know you’re not— and I’m just— I. …Should be packing. Right?”  
   
Matt sat there a minute looking at him, like it was a real question. Then he looked away and slowly stood up, to pick up the keyboard and newspaper again.  
   
**   
   
So in the end, it wasn’t the chair, or the rules, or any of the stupid shit John did that he shouldn’t have, that made Matt leave. In the end Matt left simply because John couldn’t ask him to stay.  
   
He could order him, and he could suggest, and he could tell him not to go if he didn’t really want to. Hell, he could _tell_ Matthew he didn’t really want to. But he couldn’t ask. John couldn’t tell Matt what _he_ wanted.  
   
Because what John wanted scared the fuck out of him.  
   
**  
   
When John did finally call Matt – not until the next morning, no matter what Lucy said – it was a fucking disaster.

He should have thought about it first. Gone in with some kind of strategy.

It could have gone worse, he figured. Matt didn’t scream at him or hang up in his ear, and he knew the kid had call ID so, John figured it meant something that he took the call at all.  
   
Matt didn’t sound happy to hear from him, exactly. Well no, scratch that. He sounded too happy. Bright. Cheery. _Lying_.  
   
It was awkward. They exchanged ‘how-are-ya’s, probably giving each other a much rosier and more enthusiastic picture of their boring-ass lives than reality, in some kind of bullshit I’m-okay-you’re-okay one-upmanship tournament.  
   
Groping wildly for some reason for his call, John had mentioned that Matt had left a few of his things at the house. As was par for the course, Matt had completely misinterpreted this as John wanting him all-the-way gone, and offered immediately to come over that very night and get his things out of John’s way.  
   
Then again maybe the kid just really wanted his stuff, and John was the one misinterpreting things. There was a lot of that going around.  
   
They agreed that Matt would come by sometime around 8pm, and John was on tenterhooks for hours. This was his last chance to talk to the kid – possibly ever, if he played his hand wrong – so he better make it count.  
   
He wasn’t ready. He needed more time.  A game plan. He called Matt back again and cancelled.  
   
**  
   
By the time he did get Matt to the door three days later, John figured he was as ready as he was going to get.  
   
The first play went well. The kid accepted John’s offer of a beer. He was inside and had his jacket off. So far, so good.  
   
“Wow. Loveseat,” Matt noted, on their way through to the kitchen. The second play was off to a good start. “That’s…a change. Which is hard for you, I know. How ya handlin’ it big guy? Holdin’ up okay?”  
   
Back in the house a grand total of eight seconds and the kid was already lipping off. John obviously wasn’t the only one feeling punchy and defensive. He headed for the fridge and aimed for a neutral response.  
   
“Like it?” he asked, pulling out two bottles, and digging one-handed in the drawer in search of the bottle opener. “You did tell me it was time to get rid of that old chair.”  
   
He could call the kid on his attitude later. If everything kept going according to plan. Which, for a second, it looked like it wasn’t going to.  
   
“I…actually never said that,” said Matt, suddenly serious. John noticed he was holding up the bottle opener. He must have left it out on the counter. “Why would I say that? That thing has history, man. Did you know if you lift the headrest up, Lucy put Strawberry Shortcake stickers under there?”  
   
“Kid, gimme a break.” John put the bottles down on the countertop to let Matt do the honors. “Yes I know that, and I know what I heard.”  
   
John was subtly aware he was getting drawn into an argument again. Maybe things had turned out for the best after all.  
   
“Do you?” Matt was countering. “Because I didn’t say to get rid of it. I said I’d buy you a new one. If you wanted.”  
   
Well, shit. Score one for the kid. Matt handed John his bottle, and then clinked the necks, like he knew he’d won.  
   
“Okay,” Matt conceded, as John let him lead the way back to the living room. “So I might have used the unfortunate phrases ‘old and busted’ and ‘why the huge deal’, and yeah, I still think it was a just a touch on the overkill side to go on a tirade about getting the flu and baby-puke. But. I didn’t say throw it out. Oh, and how your second child was conceived…yeah that…that I really didn’t need to hear about.”  
   
“No?” John could feel the start of a smile. “Sorry kid, that’s just how it works. You gotta christen new furniture.”  
   
“Respect old furniture. Gratuitously defile new stuff. Got it. Some day I’ll get used to your rules.”  
   
This felt right. Just this easy, soft-voiced banter. John remembered this. Making up was the best part of fighting.  
   
“Think so? Because I was thinkin’, if you’re gonna be hanging around here again, the house rules commission could use a second member. “  
   
Matt smiled, but he kept looking down at John’s new couch and didn’t reply. That was no good. It looked like play three was about to get sacked.  
   
“You were saying something about breaking in furniture?” Matt said finally. “Because I notice you got a brand new loveseat that’s looking kind of un-traumatized and full of itself. Overstuffed, even. What do you think, furniture expert, more beer and something sloppy? Pizza, extra cheese?”  
   
Matt was smiling over at him now, and John thought maybe the quarterback wasn’t toast just yet. John set down his beer, and gathered up his courage, and tried again.  
   
“I was thinkin’ something more along the lines of…”  
   
This was it. The Hail-Mary. John stepped forward, reaching a hand out for Matt’s hip and turning him so they were facing each other. His other hand did something it had been wanting to do for a long time; settling in the curve of Matt’s neck, fingers straying into the soft ends of his hair.  
   
Matt’s eyes got big and surprised-looking again. John found he didn’t mind so much when this was the reason.  
   
“Oh,” said the kid. “OH!” And narrowly missed spilling his beer, as his knees buckled.  
   
Both of John’s hands went to Matt’s hips to steady him. He thought that had stopped happening. But, then again, maybe these were special circumstances.  
   
“Yeah, that,” Matt was saying, setting his beer down safely on the coffee table next to John’s. “That could work too.”  
   
Time to find out.  
   
Matt brought his arms up and around John’s neck, and John pressed their foreheads together. He didn’t know where to start. It never ceased to amaze John how somebody Matt’s size could be so overwhelming.  
   
He breathed. Matt smelled familiar, like all those fancy bottles that used to take up the now-empty space in his shower. Like Matt.  
   
At this angle, the constant distraction that was Matt’s eyes was mercifully hidden from sight – now just a dark fan of long, thick lashes. Under his hands, Matt was warm and solid and as John shifted his grasp from his hips to his lower back, a couple of his fingers slipped under the edge of Matt’s shirt and his fingertips brushed skin. That incendiary skin of Matt’s, that always lit John’s fuse like it could literally throw sparks, any time he caught a bit of it. Matt made a slight, humming sound that brought John’s attention back where it belonged.  
   
But then, again it was Matt who finally stepped up and took the lead, angling his head and putting his mouth on John’s – just a tentative brush of lips at first. Like he was asking permission.  
   
And John more than granted it, flattening his palms against the small of Matt’s back and pressing forward. Matt made that little hum-sound again and opened for him, eagerly. John dragged the kid closer – sliding one arm around his hips while the other hand moved up his back – and held on. He was suddenly feeling like his own knees might give way.  
   
The kid was right, as usual. This could definitely work.  
   
John could barely trust his voice to be steady when they broke for air, but there was still one last thing he had to do.  
   
“So this new place you’re getting. Does it have a door on the bedroom?"

“Huh?" Matt's eyes were glazed over, but as usual, he was at no loss for words. "Well it’s a bachelor, so no bedroom. But it does have a door, so. But yeah, it’s…well no, it’s not _nice_ but it’s pretty okay. You should come by some time. I don’t have a fancy loveseat like this one, but I can show you my _mattress_.” Matt raised his eyebrows to indicate this was a major selling point. “Soon to be an actual bed. So. Yeah. Stay tuned.”

“You know, my bedroom has a bed in it. S’got a door too. With a lock even.”  
   
“Okay, okay. Rub it in. Poor, pathetic, homeless hack-boy will never have it as good as he had it here at good ol’ Casa McClane. Go ahead.”  
   
“Come on kid. You wanted me to tell you what I want, this is it. I want you back here, alright? With me, under this roof. …In my bed.”  
   
“Your bed?” Matt’s voice caught on the words, went a little rough and uneven. John liked the way it sounded.  
   
 “Hell, I’m not even telllin' you, I’m askin’. Whaddya say, huh?”  
   
“Well,” Matt said, voice a little steadier now. “I’d have to say it depends.”  
   
That wasn’t a ‘no’. John cocked a brow and waited for his answer.  
   
“On whether we can still do the loveseat thing first. I’m kind of attached to the idea right now. I’m still onside with the bed thing. Really. I see a lot of potential there, but I—“  
   
John gave his answer by pushing their mouths together again. He kept pushing until the backs of Matt’s knees met the edge of the couch and started to bend again. John gave him a little encouraging shove and the second Matt’s ass hit the cushion he scrambled over so his back was to the armrest. He reached up a hand and got a mittful of John’s shirt so he could tug and direct him, show him where he wanted him.  
   
“Yeah, I’m liking this christening thing more and more,” Matt said, grinning, as John carefully settled himself over him, with a hand braced on the armrest on either side of him. “Although, you know, it’s almost sad that old thing is gone. It might have been old and busted, but it was awesome for Gran Turismo. Even if it _did_ smell like a road house.”  
   
“Gone? I never said it was gone, kid.”  
   
“I knew it! You still have it?”  
   
“Basement,” John answered, lifting one of his hands to work his fingers up under the fabric of Matt’s shirt again.  
   
“Hey! I just bought a new TV for my apartment. I could set it up with my sound system down there and…” Matt trailed off when he felt what John was doing.  
   
“Remind me to update the list of house rules,” John told him.  
   
“…Later,” he added, as Matt slid a hand over his shoulder to the back of his neck and started to pull him close.  
   
“[Later](http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/6958/rules3.jpg),” Matt agreed, grinning slyly. “Much, much later.”   
   
END   



End file.
